


Polygirl

by deslea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fic, Sex Work, polyjuice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:11:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6183790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deslea/pseuds/deslea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Knockturn Alley, Kitty will be anyone you want her to be, for a price…that is, if you have a strand of their hair. A surprising number of her clients want her to be Bellatrix Lestrange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Polygirl

i. Voldemort

The first time Kitty was asked to be Bellatrix Lestrange was by the man who made her famous.

Doubtless, he thought himself her most remarkable client, but he wasn't. He was no different to the vast majority of her clients, men who wanted women they couldn't have. And it was invariably men like him, powerful men accustomed to getting their way, not used to being denied. Men accustomed to using their money to get what they wanted anyway. 

When a man like that wanted a woman who didn't want them, well, oftentimes, they came to her. A generous fee, a strand of hair added to her stash of Polyjuice, and _viola._ No more being denied.

It was a dirty job, she supposed, but someone had to do it. While she wouldn't go so far as to call it a public service, it was very likely that at least some of her clients would to turn to darker measures without her.

Not the Dark Lord, though. That was the one interesting thing about it. He wanted the girlfriend treatment, and Kitty gradually put together from the details he revealed that Bella was too insane to give it to him. He'd been a younger man when he first came to her, and he had never had Bella back then. By the time of his nightmarish return as a disfigured, pale spectre, he'd had her a thousand times, but she was still mad, still unable to let him love her. She could devour and be devoured, but tenderness? No. He came to Kitty for that.

Kitty gave it to him. It could have been worse.

It could have been Sirius Black.

 

ii. Sirius

It was a rare client that could creep Kitty the fuck out, but Sirius Black managed it without fail.

It wasn't that he was a murderer. His body count was considerably lower than the Dark Lord's, after all. And it wasn't that he was an Animagus, although she could have lived without him coming right into the brothel as a dog (she dreaded to think what the neighbours must be speculating behind closed doors). It wasn't even that he hated Bella's guts. Hate sex was a bigger part of her life as a Polygirl than people seemed to think.

It was the way he _breathed._

It was like he was breathing _fire._ Acrid, sour, contaminating fire, fuelled by things diseased and rotten, leaving ash in her mouth and her lungs. Like the Dementors had taken some of him, and left some of themselves behind.

He could see what it did to her, and he _liked_ it. "Go on, Bella," he hissed through rotting teeth. "Take it. Take the darkness. It's coming for you, just like your sodding Dark Lord came for me."

When he came, it was like lava, heavy, weighing her down. Filling her with coarse fire that overwhelmed and destroyed anything in its wake.

He wasn't the only client who wanted to kill the object of his obsession, but he was the only one who made her feel like he was killing _her_.

 

iii. Lucius

Of all the clients who asked Kitty to be Bellatrix, Lucius Malfoy was the simplest.

For Lucius, Bellatrix was just a kink, a bit of strange on the side when he needed a change of pace. He didn't love her. He didn't hate her or want to see her dead (at least not with any great conviction). She was just a woman in his orbit, one he viewed with antipathy, enough to get his rocks off by imagining her writhing beneath him, but that was as far as it went. 

Really, the only thing that made him noteworthy was the fact that he had a heart attack on the premises. 

His wife came with the Healer and tended to him, and it became apparent that Lucius had come to Kitty with her blessing. They used Polyjuice between them, but she had refused to play her sister. 

"I told you that woman would be the death of me," Lucius had quipped when he woke, and his wife had laughed and kissed him, and tipped Kitty handsomely for her discretion, as well.

They asked her to see him at home after that, but Kitty refused. She thought if Bellatrix ever saw her in character, she might very well be the death of Kitty, too.

 

iv. Snape

Snape was the only one she ever asked _why._ Mostly because he was the only one who didn't make the answer clear on his own.

The frank curiosity of the question seemed to surprise him into honesty. "Because she scares the _shit_ out of me."

"Conquering your fears, then?" she wondered.

"Making them life-sized, at least."

"I've never met her and she scares the shit out of me, too," Kitty confessed.

A smile spread over his features - a smile that she would learn later was rare. "Clever girl."

He only saw her the once. Kitty supposed he had conquered his fears.

 

v. Rodolphus

There was something about Bella, Kitty thought. Something that woke the urge to love in men for whom love lay sleeping.

Rodolphus Lestrange wasn't the only husband on her books. They made up a sizeable minority of her clients. Husbands who genuinely loved their wives, but who had grown apart from them as conflicts and minutia and shared living took their toll. 

Rodolphus wasn't so different from them, either. He was an emotionally illiterate man, not uncommon among the Purebloods, and totally unable to reach out to his wife even if she had had the ability to respond.

And yet he loved her. He loved her with all of his miserly, grudging heart. In his way, he was no different to the Dark Lord. Two of the most powerful men alive, frustrated and hungry and grieving in the face of the demons devouring Bella's mind, the one enemy conquerable by neither. She saw them both as the Second War came to a close, and both were as pitiable as each other.

Rodolphus' power was fading, those last days of the war. He'd been demolished by Azkaban, and demolished further by whatever it was that was breaking the Dark Lord down. Kitty wondered whether life could have been different for him. If he knew that love was not meant to be hidden away like treasure and pored over in the dark.

"I think I can die happy now," Rodolphus said, the last time he saw her. He shot her a crooked little grin and cocked his eyebrow, like it was just a joke, just his little bit of whimsy. 

Kitty didn't think it was whimsy at all, and his long, slow kiss felt like a goodbye.

 

vi. Coda

When the war ended, she was glad, as any decent person would be.

But she also grieved for a little girl lost, a mad child-woman who invited love, and hatred, and fear. Who drew the mad and the wounded into her orbit, and maybe even loved some of them, but could never seem to give. Who never knew she existed, and would probably have killed her for it if she had.

And sometimes, she looked down into the eyes of the dark, unfathomable girl-child she bore nine months after the war, and wondered. About Polyjuice and Bella's hair and her DNA. About madness. About how we learn to love. About whether the father was Rodolphus or the Dark Lord and whether it mattered. About why she had been utterly unable to bring herself to stop the child from being born at all. 

She didn't know. But she would teach the child to love.

Just in case.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this Tickld post](http://www.tickld.com/x/sp/20-horrifying-implications-of-the-harry-potter-universe) about Twenty Horrifying Implications of the Harry Potter Universe. Specifically number 16, which reads, "Two words: Polyjuice Prostitutes. You know that girl you've got a crush on? Just find a single hair and some polyjuice and voila! Have a prostitute drink some polyjuice for an hour of fun with anyone. And you know there is a black market for that. Remember that witch who was selling what looked like fingernails in Knockturn Alley? Yep."


End file.
